Happy New Year!
Did you make a New Year’s resolution?
Hi all,
This is my second post since moving to Substack. It’s definitely easier to write in than MailChimp was, so maybe I’ll be writing you more. It has a chat feature which I will try to enable. Let me know what you think.
My resolution for 2023 is to tune in cosmic energies. What the heck does that mean? I’m not sure I know myself, but part of the resolution is to figure that out as I go. I want to listen to the universe, get in a groove, go with the flow, feel out opportunities and possibilities.
I’m grateful to have reached a point where making a living can take a back seat to simply living. Part of tuning in, for me, is making art. I’ve made “daily art” a practice since the fall, and I’m getting into a groove with it. You may have noticed I’ve been more active on Twitter and Instagram, posting a lot of images. Funny enough, it started when I got interested in AI image-generation (on Midjourney), which initially I was very excited about. But soon I found myself getting frustrated with the AI’s limitations and went back to making my own images. However AI art is still quite fascinating and I use it sometimes to help me get inspired, kind of like a mood board.
If you’re interested in this subject, you might like to join a Facebook group I started called Prompt Whispering, where we work together on weekly challenges and share the text prompts we use to generate imagery. If you still do Facebook, that is!
Michelle and I have been enjoying some time in Highland Pines, Arizona where we have a vacation house. As part of the #dailyart project I made a couple of WPA-inspired posters celebrating our neighborhood in the Arizona mountains, which was once a mining claim.
Threadless, where I post and sell my T-shirt designs, runs design competitions about once a month. Each competition has a theme, and I’m finding them a fun way to focus my daily art projects. I haven’t won anything yet but that’s not really the point!
The December challenge was New Year’s resolutions, which spurred me to create some of the art at the top of this message. The most recent challenge is called “Y2k” which kinda stumped me at first. It shouldn’t have — I mean, I did live through that time period and all — but when I started thinking about it, a whole aesthetic did come back to me. Among other things I did a riff “belief as a drug,” inspired by liminal thinking.
On the subject of Y2K, I wonder if you remember the “Techno Viking” meme. I came across it recently and found the whole story fascinating. In the early days of the internet, a guy posted a video from a Berlin street party, which later went viral when it was posted to YouTube.
The guy featured in the video (who became known as Techno Viking) later sued the filmmaker and won (You can read all about it on Wikipedia). Techno Viking’s identity is still unknown. The lawsuit kinda backfired though because, well, once something like that is out, it’s out (cf. the Barbara Streisand Effect).
Anyway I must be subject to the Streisand Effect because the whole story makes me want to celebrate the meme who sued his creator and won. So with, I guess, total disrespect for the Techno Viking himself ( I mean, his privacy is shot now anyways) I made a video and some art about it.
Plus, it’s just fun to say “Techno Viking.” “TECHNO VIKING!”
I hope you will join me in making art a regular practice. If not daily then maybe weekly?
What are your resolutions? It’s totally cool if you don’t do that by the way. But if you do, I’d love to hear about them. You can send me a note by simply replying to this email.
All the art from this newsletter, and more, is up and available as T-shirts or prints on my Threadless shop. So if you want to support my work, have a look and see if anything strikes your fancy. If you do buy something, send me a photo. I do love to see my work come to life in the world!
And let me know if that chat thing works (Fingers crossed).
Until next time,
I was looking into doing mosaics again. You have inspired me. Perhaps I do ai versions!
Hello! It's great to hear what you've been up to. Looks like the chat thing works :)